I have written many times about the value of politeness in your career, but the kindness of a stranger this weekend past truly delighted me. On Friday evening, I got a text from a colleague that Mr Stephen Fry was in Dublin and would be visiting my neck of the woods. How had Mr Reid found this? Because Mr Fry is an inveterate Twitterer:

So I sent Stephen a weather forecast for the neighbourhood and, when I awoke on Saturday morning, checked his Tweets. Sure enough, he had trekked out from the city centre, no doubt at a forced march pace, to my back yard:

Look familar?

Now I have long been a fan of Stephen’s, and my girls are big admirers too – because of course, Mr Fry is the voice of the Harry Potter audiobooks [soon I’ll introduce them to his Oscar Wilde readings]. So when I called my older daughter and told her Mr Fry was in the vicinity, she said not a word, turned on her heel and reappeared moments later in her coat, carrying a Harry Potter book under her arm.

She was on her way to dance class anyway, so her mother took her on a slight detour down to Sandycove to see if a certain illustrious storyteller was anywhere in the vicinity. I thought it only decent to warn the man in question:

What father’s heart wouldn’t burst with delight at that? So I hereby officially declare Mr Fry to be the nicest man on the entire internet. Incidentally Stephen, if you find yourself in Sandycove again, you should pop in on the really interesting bit – the Gun Battery, which was built at the same time as the Martello tower and which has the further advantage of containing my mother’s truly eclectic collection of collections, along with the Napolenonic and WW2 artefacts and a stunning view from the lump of granite bedrock in the back garden.